Are you in the sandy part of MA or the hard ground part?

Are you mowing at the highest setting?

Can you stick a screwdriver into it?

I am in the sandy area. New construction so there is about 4" of loam. It dries out quick IMO. Grass isn't growing super fast but yes, at the highest setting.

I am able to get the screwdriver in the ground in most places.....some only go about 2" before i really have to give some force. The dying areas seemed ok based on that test.

Brittle to the point where it is breaking when i walk on it :(

Sounds to me that you aren't watering it enough.

I'm wondering if that area just dries out fast. Is the grass a goner there or will it come back up with watering?

People always say the KBG dormancy mechanism is excellent. Here's a good chance find out, throw some water on it and see what happens.

Funny thing is I didn't notice this before and gave the yard an hour of water in each zone last night! I wet it again tonight so let's see what it does

That does look like dormancy and does also look like a lot of my lawn at the moment (it stopped raining two weeks ago, except for 0.3" last night). If you want to let it go dormant, you technically could, although I wouldn't advise that on a first-year renovation (it'll be fine, but you won't quite get 100% back).

If you do decide to take it out of dormancy with watering, keep it up. It's a huge stress to go dormant a second time, which then requires a vast amount of energy to break. Established lawns can do it, younger lawns have trouble.

... and does also look like a lot of my lawn at the moment.

Here's some motivation to do better. Check out this guy's lawn!

Yeah I'm going to bring it back with water, never planned for dormancy but we got about .7" about 10-12 days ago so I'm surprised to see this although with a young lawn that is not so thick, I think it dries out quicker

And I found a stalled sprinkler head right at that area, prob the culprit!

I think it is a wise idea to put a rain guage out so that you actually see some measure of the water you are putting out. I find my sprinklers put out 1/8" inch per hour. When trying to make sure my squash get 2 inches per week, I find it challenging to water enough over a week to get to the 2" mark. My sprinklers are up atop 6' 4x4 fence posts, and cover large circles of area.

I would defer to morpheus on this, but if the grass is brittle and breaks when you walk on it, I think it is toast. When I sodded with KBG I extended the sod across to my neighbor's driveway, about 10 feet to be neighborly. About two years later (last year) we had a long dry spell and a patch of brown lawn came in on the border between our properties. That whole circle maybe 4' across never came back. Since then my side has mostly filled back in while his is still pretty bare. (he doesn't do anything for the KBG, so it is interesting to see the difference between the two lawns since it is the same sod).

So I picked up a yard of compost, non manure based. That should work well eh?

It should help hold water, yes! Just keep in mind it also requires extra water to get that wet first... :-)

My lawn has now entered the "crunchy" phase as June has featured exceptionally hot weather and just about an inch of rain grand total. July, quite frankly, looks hotter and even drier.

Mine's eight or nine years old, though, and fully established, so dormancy won't be an issue and I'm letting it go this year (we've been asked to please try and conserve water if possible, but we aren't under any restrictions). It's perfectly valid to restrict water usage to keeping gardens and shrubs alive, and letting the lawn go. KBG will be back just as long as it gets about 0.25" every two weeks, on average, which most of the NE has gotten so far, easily.

I have several "dry patches" here and there already this year... I applied shampoo and I water deep and infrequent (1 inch water every 2 weeks at the moment)

Anyway, I came across an interesting article about golf course watering. They had similar problems on the course where some spots got drier than others (possibly due to roots not deep enough, different grass types, varying soil conditions/who knows/etc)

They said they COULD water enough to adequately provide for even the driest areas, but doing that would require A LOT more water and would not be feasible.

Instead they run hoses and hand water the areas that need additional water on a more frequent basis...

Taking this advice to my own yard, I currently water every 2 weeks and then every 1 week I have been hand watering these "trouble spots" for about 20-30 mins. This is still infrequent enough to prevent fungal issues, but it does help the struggling areas make it to the 2 week watering schedule.

After four weeks I am seeing improvement and only time will tell if it cures the problem. Hopefully the roots will continue to grow deeper and I can hand water smaller and smaller areas over time.

Kind of a different approach than just watering the entire lawn if the spots are small enough to tackle by hand...

take a pitch fork and fork them up if they are that small. Do not break it up and hurt the roots, just help oxygen get in there and it will help you speed along to your goal.

Thanks, I may aerate it a bit in some areas.

There ya go, my grandfather used to tell me the best thing for your lawn is the sweat of your brow & your own footsteps in the soil!

PSU4ME I live in central Mass and my backyard is in full sun and there are parts of the lawn that are going dormant.

I just can't seem to get enough water on the spots further away from the sprinkler heads. I think it could use help with water retention. We should get some help with the rain today and the expected heavy showers tonight.

What kind of (brand name) compost did you put down; did you get at a big box store?

Thanks

Hey gle2011. I got this stuff from angels garden center in hopkinton, $49 for a yard and it's supposed to be a good organic compost. Prob didn't need to get this good if stuff for the use I needed it for but its what they had! Glad for this rain though, hopefully more tonight. My grass has just about stopped growing